I wish. AFAICT, that's the universal human condition.
One of the great things about ChatGTP is as a framing point — I can now use it as a standard by which to say: "this thing we all keep rolling our eyes at for its mistakes? It's knows more about this than ${person} does" (sometimes I'm that ${person}, helps point me in the direction of intellectual humility).
It's very much not an off-the-shelf camera; it seems to have involved years of custom engineering work.
This article doesn't seem to address the specific question of "why is this camera monochrome?" but you can see that it wasn't trivial to make an instrument that would work well in this difficult environment. So it's definitely not like "and let's throw a commercial digital camera on there too just for fun!".
It's a legitimate question why some kind of color camera wasn't considered worth including, but lots of space missions have sensors that are something other than a simulacrum of human vision. That's why so many astronomical images end up getting published in false color.
In almost all of those cases, the justification for the false color seems to be some form of "true color wouldn't have been possible or appropriate for the scientific purposes of this imagery".
Thank you for acknowledging this is a legitimate question.
I've no issue with all sorts of cameras and scientific instruments being placed on a space craft. I don't expect to get access to all the data that is sent back - though - as it is from the public purse - I think it should be made available.
My point is that the only interaction us great unwashed have with these missions is with the imagery that is provided.. How difficult would it be to have a colour camera?!?! I have a crap mobile and it has 3 cameras! And one on the front! When colour cameras have been available to everyone for so long, its simply inconceivable that NASA can never provide decent imagery! Its 2024 ffs, surely we can have colour by now! No? If not now, when?
> How difficult would it be to have a colour camera?!?! I have a crap mobile and it has 3 cameras! And one on the front! When colour cameras have been available to everyone for so long, its simply inconceivable that NASA can never provide decent imagery!
They do have missions that have great color cameras, like on Mars!
The James Webb Space Telescope also produces great color imagery, but it's normally presented in false color because its camera is biased toward the infrared.
In that diagram you see that the Webb sees more colors than the human eye, but most of them are ones that our eyes don't see. They have various arguments that the colors that it does see are more interesting and useful for seeing very faraway stuff.
As someone whose first programming job was processing multispectral satellite data[0][1]: if you put me in charge of a mission, my first question would be "which specific frequencies provide the most scientific value?", and then focus on that/those. They won't necessarily have anything in common with what you'd normally use for "true colour" (quite a lot of what you see in astronomy falls into this category: even when you see a colourised press-release, it's not what you'd see if you looked at it with your natural eye).
As for "what about a colour camera":
First, look at all the noise in the images, all those slightly curved streaks. That's radiation going through the satellite and hitting the sensor from the side. Normal consumer stuff isn't even trying to cope with that sort of environment.
Second, look at how low the frame rate is. That suggests the data rate is really low, and they probably don't have spare capacity for anything merely decorative.
> Just ask yourself, if you were in charge of the mission, in what world would you decide to use a black and white camera rather than colour to capture the data of what is probably a multi-billion dollar mission?
In this world, where I choose the best tool for the job. Color cameras are worse for this task. I don’t make engineering decisions based on gut reactions to things I know nothing about. I ask questions then make a decision based on facts and objectives.
